London International Wine Fair in May - and Lord's in July

18-May-10 - I'm going to stop complaining about Ex-Hell. No, it hasn't got any better, there is still no direct train from central London, there are still too many stairs to the loos and it's still a half-kilometre walk from the station to gate 8, where the presentation theatre is situated - and they've just added on another chunk to make it even further. But I've gone into this all before so, enough said.  I was there for a couple of days meeting old chums at the LIWF and also visiting the bodegas from Rioja Alavesa. I was to do a presentation on the Wednesday, similar to the one I did last year, but with different participants, and organised by the lovely Lucia Artaza Ibañez from the Bilbao Chamber of Commerce. I won't go into too much detail now, as the tastings will feature in a later post, after the event at Lord's (see below), but the standard was extremely high, especially a wine made from 100-year-old pre-Phylloxera vines, about which more later.

In addition, and advance notice: I shall be presenting (again for the Basque government) a tasting of Rioja Alavesa plus the other three wines from the Basque Country: Getariako Txakolina (Chacolí de Guetaria - Gipuzkoa/Guipúzcoa), Bizkaiko Txakolina (Chacolí de Vizcaya - Bizkaia/Vizcaya) and Arabako Txakolina (Chacolí de Álava - Araba/Álava) on Wednesday 07-Jul-10 at Lord's - more info from Claire Felstead. As an aside, I can't say 'Getariako Txakolina' without hearing the music of Carioca from the 1933 Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers film Flying down to Rio (showing your age! Ed).